Metal and melody: It's a new age for Godsmack

By Jay N. Miller/For The Patriot Ledger

Wednesday

Aug 22, 2018 at 4:44 PMAug 22, 2018 at 5:27 PM

Godsmack has had a reliable formula for their hard rock and heavy metal over the years, as the quartet has sold more than 20 million albums since forming in Lawrence in 1995, and also placed 23 singles among the top 10 rock radio charts.

But for their latest effort, the album "When Legends Rise," released on April 27, the band and its songwriter and singer Sully Erna tried to go deeper, expanding their palette musically, focusing a bit more on melody, and – shocker! – even including a song or two that might be considered a ballad.

Godsmack is part of the co-headlining tour with Shinedown which touches down at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield on Saturday night.

Godsmack released its debut album in 1996, using the old do-it-yourself model, but "All Wound Up" found an immediate audience, and with local radio station WAAF an early and enthusiastic supporter, the quartet was quickly signed to a major label. The self-titled debut on Universal/Republic came out in 1999 and went four times platinum, and with numerous stints on mega-tours like Ozzfest, the band became international stars.

Godsmack includes Erna, Tony Rombola on lead guitar, Robbie Merrill on bass, and Shannon Larkin on drums. Erna had begun his music career as a drummer, before discovering his talent for singing and songwriting, so it's probably not surprising that the quartet went through a couple drummers before settling on Larkin in 2003. But the group's momentum never flagged, and with their albums "Faceless" (2003), "IV" (2006) and "The Oracle" (2010) they achieved the rare feat of having three consecutive albums hit the number one spot on the rock charts.

The newer direction on this latest album hasn't done anything to interrupt that momentum, as the single "Bulletproof" has already hit the top slot among Mainstream Rock Songs on Billboard's charts, and the title cut was used on the WWE's Royal Rumble at the end of April.

We caught up with Larkin last week as the tour had a rare bit of free time in Virginia Beach, and asked about their intended "re-invention" on this new album, which was produced by Erik Ron. Godsmack has been compared in the past to Alice in Chains, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, and their New England pals Aerosmith, and the new music certainly retains their hard rocking fire, while adding in some tasty new elements.

"It's true, we made a conscious effort on this new record to evolve," said Larkin. "Sully is always the lyricist, and if our music is going to have emotion, it has to come from him. All of our songs, as he'd tell you, are true, and they're all, one way or another, about him. That's another reason why our music connects, because our audience is not stupid and they would be able to tell if we did something that was not real, and true. Sully wears his heart on his sleeve, and unfortunately it gets broken a lot. But when it does, the rest of us in the band say 'well, we're going to get a good song out of this.'"

"Sully has also been doing more of his solo work on piano now," Larkin added. "That has made a big difference, because now he's singing in different keys, and more keys. We've spent years playing in the same basic keys, but now we have all kinds of other keys to explore. We see this kind of evolving as a key to our longevity: hard rock like we do is a very physical, young man's game. It's like playing sports and you try to roll with the punches. We don't want to feel like we're faking it up there onstage. Any band that has longevity can usually attribute it to exploring other genres."

Larkin continued: "The title of this new album is not meant to represent us thinking of ourselves as legends, but more a statement that we feel our music has had a rebirth here. This new music is like a catharsis of the soul of our music."

Larkin postulates that one key to Godsmack's creative juices still running so strong, 20-odd years after they began, is that they've learned how to space out their time and touring.

"I think one of the secrets to our continuing to be able to do this and stay together and enjoy it, is that we have the luxury of having a year off," Larkin said, laughing. "We've gotten into a cycle where every four years we release a new record. We spend a year or so recording an album, then tour it as much as we can for the next two years. Then, we just take a year off and go off and do our own things. Sully has his solo work and Tony and I have been doing our blues thing.

Larkin said he and Rombola are "burning the candles at both ends."

"Tony's ability as a blues player just blew me away about seven years ago," Larkin explained. "Everybody knows him as 'the riff meister' from Godsmack, but that's a totally different kind of playing, and there's not really room in Godsmack for lead guitar solos. The dude has some Stevie Ray Vaughan running through his soul and I am never tired of bragging about my guitar player. Tony and I have this group, the Apocalypse Blues Revue and when we get a short break this fall, we're going to squeeze in a short tour with Kenny Wayne Shepherd. As soon as the blues tour ends we're off to tour Europe with Godsmack."

Larkin had a lengthy and diffuse background as a drummer before joining Godsmack, most notably in the bands Ugly Kid Joe and Wraithchild. But he's adapted so well to Godsmack that Erna has been quoted as saying "If God made anyone to play drums, it was Shannon Larkin." And it's obvious Larkin is still excited and enthused about the band and the new music.

"There's a lot of firsts on this, our seventh record," Larkin pointed out. "There are our first ballads for example. We approached the whole thing differently, but we also didn't want to alienate our fans, so we kept our edge and we're still a riff-oriented band. We dealt more with our sound on a production level, like having a synthesizer bass underneath our actual bass in the mix. We definitely made a conscious decision to make a rebirth, to sort of mature into our ages – we're all 50 now, although we can still play like we're 19. But the chemistry we have is really the most important thing – and all this melting pot of everyone's influences really works."

"Self discipline is a big part of our longevity," Larkin added. "Sully and I don't drink anymore. We used to party hard, for the first 15 years, but then it becomes a vicious cycle of always trying to recover. We have to pay attention and do some physical training to get ready to tour. Now, seven weeks into this tour, my body feels like a machine – at 51 years old."

With the co-headlining format of this tour with Shinedown, both bands get roughly 75 minutes on stage, and Godsmack's sets have usually included four or five tunes from the new album. But they've also been mixing in at least one unexpected cover, which changes night-by-night. So far the intriguing covers have included songs from AC/DC, Joe Walsh, Stevie Wonder, and Alice Cooper.

"The covers thing is so cool because it allows us to jam with the other bands," said Larkin. "We have little jam rooms at these venues and after soundcheck we'll go in and just start messing around. We've done an Elton John song and that Stevie Wonder tune, 'Superstition,' came about because Tony is a great Stevie Ray Vaughan fan and Stevie had a version of that one. Someone was messing around with the keyboards and accidentally had them in clavinet mode, which is how it is on 'Superstition,' so that tune began like that, unintentionally growing out of that jam."

Any predictions for a unique cover for this Boston-area show?

"We haven't thought that far ahead yet," Larkin said, laughing. "We literally pick those while we're loosening up in the jam room at the arena every night. We'll try to have a good one."